If Only Page 14

  Ms. D. asks our group to come up with a list of advice for kids or grown-ups who know someone whose parent died. It’s harder to do than I would have thought. We all have an easier time coming up with things people should not say. “Don’t cry” is out. “I know just how you feel” is really out. So are, “Everything is going to be just fine,” and “Everything happens for a reason.”

  We agree that there is no one right thing to say or do, but that somehow you have to let the person know you care, and that the worst thing to do is to ignore them or pretend that this huge thing didn’t happen. We also agree that saying “I’m here for you” or “I’m sorry about your mom or dad” is good. Or “I’m so sorry,” or “I don’t know what to say except I’m sorry,” or even, “I don’t know what to say.” A few people mention sending cards as a way to show you care, and I nod my head in agreement. Clare and I start joking about the importance of ziti and Jell-O mold deliveries, but the other kids apparently love ziti and Jell-O. I guess there’s no agreement on food dos and don’ts.

  Speaking of dos and don’ts, I’m disappointed that Dr. Rothstein never answered my letter, but I guess I’m not surprised. I just hope she read it. I wonder what it’s like for her to have her patients die. I wonder if she gets used to it or if each death is hard for her. In some ways, I think I’d like to have a career helping sick people. I was planning on being a newspaper journalist like my Aunt Jennifer and Uncle Peter. Now I’m thinking it would feel good to help people and maybe I would be good at it since I know how hard it is to live with all this sickness and dying. But it also terrifies me. Who wants to be around sickness and death all the time? I wonder why Dr. Rothstein chose to be a cancer doctor. Maybe she had someone die in her family.

  It’s been three weeks since we got back from California, and now Dad is sick. He’s trying not to ask for too much, but I feel sorry for him and I am staying busy getting him tea and Tylenol, Kleenex and water. Deborah drops off some chicken soup. When I meet her at the door, I tell her, “I don’t want you to catch his germs,” and quickly begin to say thank you and good-bye. He sounds happy when I tell him who brought the soup he’s sipping.

  After all those days acting like an adult nurse, I decide I deserve a reward. I hope my birthday money from Gigi and Pop Pop will be enough to make my secret plan a reality. I call Clare to ask if she’ll help.

  As soon as we figure out that both of our soccer practices are canceled because of wet fields, we hatch our plan to go to the mall. Clare’s mom drives us and announces that she’s going to do her own shopping. She asks us to check in by cell phone a few times. We smile at each other and nod, being careful not to nod too enthusiastically.

  After saying good-bye to Clare’s mom, I put on my brave face and walk us over to the accessories store called Etcetera. They sell all kinds of jewelry and hair accessories. In the back, behind a black velvet curtain, they have an ear piercing section. I go into research mode and ask how much it costs. Then I ask if I can watch someone else do it first, which Clare and I do. The lady “patient” doesn’t scream, so I get right up on the purple plastic stool as soon as she’s done. Clare holds my hand and I close my eyes. Two loud gun shots later, I have gold studs in my ears. They didn’t even make me have a parent sign anything! I guess it’s kind of a sketchy situation, even though it costs forty dollars. Maybe that’s why they have you go behind a curtain. Clare said she felt nauseated watching me, so I’m glad I couldn’t see it happening to my own ears.

  Joci notices my earrings as soon as she sees me on Monday morning. “Check it out, Corinna! Nice studs.”

  “Thanks. I finally got them.”

  “I thought your parents were totally against them. How’d you convince them?”

  I wince before answering. “For my birthday.”

  “They look great. Now we’re twins.”

  Four whole days pass before Dad notices my ears. I kept waiting for his outburst, but it never came. When he finally sees them, he just shakes his head. I’m not sure which is worse, the silent head shaking or the explosion I had been expecting. But what could he do? I guess he could make me take them out and let them close up. I know I have to be careful not to let them get infected because the last thing I want is to develop puss bubbles like Mom described to me in gory detail. The salesgirl who pierced them told me how to keep them clean and take care of them, so I’m pretty sure they’ll be fine. I avoid Mom’s urn for a few days, though.

  There’s this girl in my gym class named Nicole, who also got her ears pierced recently. I noticed because she asked our teacher if she could tape them when we were playing basketball. Nicole isn’t in the “popular” group or even in one of the other “regular” or “normal” groups. I guess she’s kind of a loner at school. I don’t know her very well and she’s never been in any of my other classes. She’s kind of overweight and most of her clothes are too small, which leads to her getting teased almost every day in gym. Some kids call her Shamu, like Shamu the whale. I would hate to be in that situation. A lot of my clothes are getting small, too, but I don’t think I’m what you would call overweight. I keep waiting for her to fight back in some way, but she just seems to ignore it.

  What makes kids think they can say stuff like that to a person? They treat her like an alien or a freak. I know how that feels, for different reasons. I feel sorry for her, but I don’t really know what I can do to make it better. It’s been bothering me more and more.

  Actually, there’s a lot of name calling in my school. Two weeks ago, we had a substitute named Ms. Higgenbotham. Jake and Dylan, those mean boys who are such jerks, kept calling her Ms. Hineybottom. She had on the most unbelievable outfit. Very un-teacherlike. She wore a regular gray suit with shocking pink and red patent leather boots. We’re talking shiny! I was so busy looking at her boots, I barely heard a word she said. At least Nicole’s last name isn’t Higgenbotham. It’s Varney. Shamu Varney is a lot better than Shamu Higgenbotham or Shamu Hineybottom. I would hate it if I had some awful nickname that I couldn’t get rid of.

  I need to get brave.

  Another Ending

  This may sound strange, but I’m not sure I want the “death” group to end. The sessions have gone by pretty quickly, except for that first one. In our last meeting, we share our e-mail addresses and sign our names with a Sharpie marker on a smooth gray rock Ms. DuBoise gives to each of us. We take turns saying something that we wish for one another as we pass around that person’s rock. Here are the wishes they give to me:

  I wish you could have a whole day or a whole week

  without feeling sad about your mom.

  I wish you never have to feel this bad again no

  matter what happens in the future.

  I wish you could have less trouble sleeping.

  I wish you can learn to cook better than your mom could.

  It’s hard to think of wishes for each of them. For Max, I say, “I wish you could have less suffering.”

  Right after the words come out of my mouth, I wish I hadn’t said them. His eyes get big and teary, and I tell myself it was a stupid thing to say. I can’t stop thinking about it, and about the Tweety Bird look he has in his eyes, so I miss some of the other things people are saying. I wonder if he will still have that look in high school. I hope not, because he looks kind of freaky, and it would be terrible if his eyes got stuck like that. I tried to say a nice thing, but it came out wrong. I hate it when I do that.

  Then Ms. D. passes out a poem to each of us by a poet named Molly Fumia.

  The paradox of healing is

  that it is both

  holding on and letting go.

  We hold onto memories,

  and we let them go;

  we hold onto feelings,

  and we let them go.

  We hold onto an old way

  of being, because the self

  we still are resides there,

  and we let go to a

  new way of being, so

  that the s
elf can live on.

  Ms. D. gives us all a wish, too.

  “My wish is that each one of you has someone to talk to when you need to or want to.”

  Then she asks us about who in our lives we can talk to about this stuff. I say I can talk to Dad, Clare, Aunt Jennifer, and my journal. I don’t mention that my journal has a name, though, because I don’t want them to make fun of me. I don’t mention Ms. Beatty, either. Chris announces that he doesn’t have anyone, so we tell him he can talk to us. Poor Chris. I don’t want him to think I have a crush on him, but I should talk to him sometimes. Feeling alone is the worst.

  Smells

  I’m walking Joci down to the nurse’s office because she got another bloody nose in the middle of math. I never have understood why bloody noses just start with no reason, and Joci said she doesn’t, either. She’s been getting them since she was little, and I’ve gone with her to the nurse many times. As soon as we walk into the office, the smell hits me. That yucky medical smell. I get a weird feeling, like I’m being transported back to one of those times with my mom in the hospital. While we are waiting, I decide to send a text message to Chris from the group. I know he spent a lot of time at hospitals, too, because his dad’s diabetes made him really sick for a long time. On my way to lunch, I stop in the bathroom to text.

  Do certain smells make u feel weird?

  Yup. I try 2 avoid medical stuff big time.

  I wouldn’t feel comfortable asking Max stuff like that, because I’m afraid I’ll upset him, and anyway, I don’t think his dad spent time in a hospital, at least not connected with his suicide.

  * * *

  In the middle of doing homework, I get a call from Aunt Jennifer.

  “How’s my favorite niece?”

  Hearing her voice makes me smile.

  “I’m your only niece,” I point out.

  “You’re still my favorite. Just wanted to check if you need anything from me.”

  “Hmm. How ’bout a visit?”

  “I’m working on that,” she reassures me. “Anything else?”

  “No, that’s it.” I’m not really in a talking mood, but I’m glad she called.

  After dinner, I decide that Sophie’s Quilt needs a piece of the flowered canvas bag where Mom’s journal is hidden. I wait until Dad is busy grading papers at his desk, and then I tiptoe into Mom’s closet with our sharpest pair of scissors. I can’t see a thing, so I have to take the whole bag out of the closet and then cut a square from the side. The bag will be ruined, but I think the quilt is more important. Before I return it, I let myself read another page.

  Last night was a professional nightmare, the kind that makes you want to crawl into a hole. In the middle of our chamber music concert at the Lisner Auditorium, a cell phone went off. I was in the middle of a really challenging passage. The obnoxious ringtone was distracting and annoying. The stage manager had reminded the audience to turn off their cell phones, but this one kept ringing. Then the alert telling you there’s a message went off. It was awful. It really threw off my concentration for the rest of that piece, and I missed one of my entrances. Fortunately, I’m pretty good at faking it, and unless you knew the piece, you probably wouldn’t have noticed. We were backstage at intermission and I went to use the bathroom. I got something out of my purse, and to my horror, I realized that I’d received a message. The offender was MY cell phone. I was mortified. When we were together waiting to go back on, Nadia said “Wasn’t that ringing coming from backstage?” I couldn’t bring myself to tell them that it was my phone. To top if off, the review of the concert that came out today was unfairly negative. It was written by the local crime reporter, Gretchen something-or-other, who has neither played a musical instrument nor studied music in her life. She didn’t even notice my missed entrance. She went on and on about the poor choice of pieces and poor interpretation. Like she knows!

  I remember Mom telling me the same story many times, usually prompted by someone else’s phone ringing during a quiet event. Reading about it in her journal made me realize it hadn’t been a funny story to her, at least not at the time.

  When I get into bed, I start thinking about Alex. I need to get his cell number so I can text him. The question is: Should I be brave and ask him myself, or should I get it from one of his friends? Maybe I’ll get an answer in my dreams tonight.

  I wake up with no memory of any dreams, helpful or not. As I brush my hair in front of the bathroom mirror, I notice that my hair is practically down to my waist. What soccer player has hair that long? I haven’t cut it since before Mom got sick. We kind of stopped doing those types of thing — haircuts, dentist appointments. Neither Mom nor Dad had any extra time or energy, and I didn’t want to be asking for things or making it any harder for them. I don’t think they could have really handled anything else on top of Mom’s illness. And now Dad seems so tired most of the time. Well, not all of the time, but a lot of the time, dragging around like a wounded otter. But guess what? I need him to start taking care of some stuff for me.

  Mom would be mad that I haven’t been to the dentist or the pediatrician in a long time. And my hair is looking all scraggly and twiglike on the ends. Scraggly hair and split ends are definitely the worst, and I don’t think Alex would be too impressed if he saw them up close.

  Dad’s sitting in the kitchen eating his cereal.

  “Dad, do you know how long it’s been since I went to the dentist? Not like I want to go, but I’m pretty sure it’s time for me to get my teeth cleaned, and maybe even a checkup with my pediatrician. Oh, and I could really use a haircut.”

  He looks surprised. Maybe he feels bad that he hadn’t thought of those things himself. He gives me a big hug and says, “I’ll get right on it.”

  It’s weird how a grown-up can forget about appointments that are supposedly so important. Mom was the one who kept track of those things. She always took me to Rodman’s drugstore before my dentist appointment, let me pick out some chocolate treat in their huge candy section, and then after the thirty minutes you have to wait after your fluoride treatment, I would get to have the chocolate. By picking it out before I went in, it made the dentist appointments less of a dreaded event. Brilliant, right?

  Two weeks later, Dad and I are late for my appointment, so I don’t even ask about picking out a treat beforehand. When it’s over, I ask Dad if we can stop at Rodman’s the way I always did with Mom, and he replies, “That’s crazy, to eat candy right after you get your teeth cleaned.”

  Well, too bad. I’m definitely going to take my kids to Rodman’s, or whatever store is near their dentist, because I think it’s a great idea, and so did Mom. My dad has a lot to learn!

  Bad News

  I’m out walking Maki after school, and my neighbor comes over to say hi. She’s one of our nice neighbors, the one who organizes our block party every year. She tells me the incredibly sad news that a boy my age who used to go to our neighborhood preschool “lost his mother.”

  Well, he didn’t lose her. She died. That is very different from losing her in a mall or on a crowded sidewalk. (Although I bet he’ll keep looking for her, like I do when I’m in any crowded place. If I see the back of a head with hair just like Mom’s, I want to follow the person until I can see their face, just to be sure it’s not her. Needless to say, I always end up disappointed.)

  This boy’s name is David DiGenoa. He goes to private school, so I haven’t seen him in a long time. Not only did his mother just die of cancer, but his father was already dead. He died a few years ago from some other kind of cancer. Now this kid has no parents. Zero. Nada. None. Life is so unfair! His situation is way worse than mine. Where is he going to live? Who will be there to talk with him, to give him hugs, to reassure him that he will have a family to live with and love him? It’s unbelievable. I hope, hope, hope that he has someone to take care of him, like a grandparent or something.

  Because David’s mom died in the middle of the school year, his whole school is probably finding out o
n the same day. Maybe it’s better if you’re sure everyone does know, and they know you know they know. It wouldn’t stop kids from getting freaked out. They would still get scared about their own moms and dads. Do they think that talking to you or being near you means they can “catch” having a parent die? Nothing like feeling that you’re contagious when you already feel so alone.

  At school, I’m listening to see how the other kids react to the news about David. Some kids are clueless, even though it was in the news since both of his parents were pretty well known around here. Eliana tells me she saw it on TV. The clueless kids are busy talking about the usual stupid stuff.

  “My mom gave me Gummi Worms today.”

  “I’ll trade you chocolate pudding for Gummi Worms.”

  “I did three kick flips in a row yesterday at the skate park.”

  “Whose sandwich smells? I can’t believe you brought tuna fish.”

  Other kids are gossiping in kind of a mean way, making up stories about horrible places where David will have to go to live.

  “He’s like the kids in the Lemony Snicket books.”

  Clare and I talk about how awful and alone poor David must be feeling. Joci agrees with us, which is a relief. I think that most kids, at some time or another, wonder and worry about what would happen to them if their parents both died.

  After my neighbor told me about David, I decided I really had to ask my dad what would happen to me if he died.

  He started shaking his head from side to side.

  “Wow, I can’t even imagine that and I don’t want you to worry about it.”

  “But I am, Dad,” I said, pushing.

  “I have a plan just in case, but I don’t want to talk about it. I’m sure we won’t need it.”